I’m embarking on another challenging journey, personal in a different way. The past year, I’ve stared my inner demons in the face and really tried to make active steps to overcome them. Granted, I’m not completely over them or “fixed” now, but I can look back and say I’ve definitely grown. In being more accepting of my circumstances, on accepting that there are things I can’t control and to focus on what I can. In dealing with looming health issues and finding a community that I can connect with in a different way than my other friends can relate to. To understand when a place is not contributing to my life in any positive way and to say no and allow that to be okay to remove yourself from it, having tried.

Now I want to challenge myself by confronting another part of myself that gives me a lack of confidence. This is the part of me that feels useless and like I don’t do enough with my time here. And I want to see if I’m able enough to handle and help with other people’s problems since I’ve been through so many unique experiences. I want to be useful with my time and intentional in my actions. And hopefully I’ll grow from it too and learn more about myself along the way- my capabilities, my limit for compassion, my ability to be empathetic.

On Goals and Motivation: The beautiful thing about goals is that you can always achieve them and make new ones, the possibilities are endless, and you have a lifetime to keep going. When I was a kid, I read this book about this really old man who decided to go to school and teach himself how to read. It was really inspiring. He could’ve decided to stay home and been embarrassed or made himself sick with worry on what others would think of him. I think a lot on our battle with these inner demons and realize that at the end of the day, our biggest challenge in any goal is overcoming our own mentality and insecurities. They could be something as apparent as being in a wheelchair or having a stutter, they could also be secrets of our past that we’ve buried deep but still influence our daily thought process, and seep into our choices and actions in life like poison.

Goals can be big or small.

My smaller goals lately have been mostly to aim at realism. I want to make goals I can achieve more immediately- cooking new kinds of food, learning a new language, focusing on building my mentality and body. All of these are goals as long as you chip at it each day and work towards it, they aren’t less valuable or successful than typical dreams like becoming rich or becoming a movie star. The hugest part of reshaping my mentality the past recent years was to becomes strong enough to go through the lung transplant evaluations that I knew were leading down to a path of not a maybe, but an eventually. I had many meltdowns at night and at the hospitals because the fear was always hanging over me, my anxiety became so bad I freaked out at the very idea of sitting in someone else’s car or trying to fall asleep. It felt like the world was weighing down on me when anyone even tried to make me talk about it: because I could get away with it sometimes, I wanted to shove the parts of me that was ill away and try to carry on looking fine and dandy and blend in with the “norm”. I was determined to live the life of a regular kid, to worry about friends, boys, and all the petty drama that came with it, handing my paper in on time, getting a job.

I need to take a moment now and appreciate myself and the fact that I went through that and got through it in 2017. I don’t often reflect on how far I come, I usually focus on what didn’t work out.

Recently, one of my goals was to go through Harry Potter World in a wheelchair for the first time, and not break down. Check. Huge win for me, even though it’s not the same as everyone clapping and cheering for you on stage or something like that.

When I think of this and all that I went through, I almost want to laugh at how petty everything else compares in life: when I get frustrated or disappointed with people, stressed over things I don’t have, and most of all, finding out how entitled and weird people are out there that you come across at your job. I remember being annoyed and complaining about it, but the truth was I felt happy. Happy that today, I got to be “normal” and complain about petty things like other people who don’t really matter in your life anyway. It’s just noise. Letting things get to you and affect you negatively is draining- you gotta choose what is important and worth being stressed over. This is something my dad has constantly reminded me growing up about not being too sensitive or upset over everything.

There are always going to be situations and people who suck. You can’t go through life only meeting nice and good people, never getting hurt – and I don’t mean just by strangers or acquaintances, but the people closest to you sometimes – yes, your friends, your family. But that’s how you learn and grow each time. Who other people are, what you can reasonably expect, how you can deal with the situation better, how you yourself can be better.

I had an epiphany recently, and that was the realization of just how low my self confidence has been. I always knew I was shy and reluctant to open up to others, but I was thinking about how I subconsciously approached my friendships I’ve had in a way as if they were not only valuable to me, but that I owed them the world for taking the pity and time to be my friend at all. As if I brought nothing to the friendship, and had to spend the rest of my life trying to prove that I am worthy of being a friend. I tried to be more extroverted, bubbly, happy, to smile and be more fun. To go out of my way when I could for them so they wouldn’t see my flaws. And when it didn’t work out with the friendship, it cut me deep. To the core. I would be resentful with them, disappointed that they must’ve seen that I didn’t measure up and was too much of a burden.

There is a difference between understanding who is precious in your life, but also understanding your self-worth and all that you contribute with your presence and actions. As from the movie “Wonder”, it’s okay if you were born to be different and to stand out. Embrace it. You are worthy of friendships, and as long as you try your best and care for them, they are lucky to have you.

True confidence comes from within. Today I came to the revelation about how regular people can walk 5-10 times more than I can at 2-5 times the speed and still don’t get tired…. how do you not feel fucking invincible?? I would. My second revelation… if you can feel at peace and accepting about yourself even as you sit in a wheelchair with no make up on as a bunch of people you know stare at you and question you, then you’re still fucking invincible. (I haven’t reached this point of invincibility yet ._.;)

I used to think of a strong mind as a fortress, one that can protect itself from negativity, and barricade positive vibes within. But now I think of a strong mind more as a temple- why? Let the negativity enter, sit there even. And STILL be able to have your positive vibes rise up higher than all the noise- this is what constitutes a strong mind.

So… my family is planning a trip to Harry Potter World and Disney and I’m simultaneously excited yet super anxious.

The biggest hurdle is that my therapist suggested that I start using a wheelchair of some sort so that I can avoid becoming exhausted to the point of major discomfort and fatigue, and tense muscles. I had never considered using a wheelchair before, and the hypocrisy that is me, is that when I see other people in wheelchairs, I don’t think much of it, yet when I think of ME in it, I am riddled with a million feelings: perhaps

Shame, that I have to submit to a wheelchair and can’t make it on my own two legs,

Guilt, that I don’t really deserve to use a wheelchair and am a “fake” illness person (doesn’t help that tons of other people have doubted my illness over the years), and that my family will have an extra task to do in pushing me around,

Embarrassment when I have another extra thing to make me feel different, and perhaps

Relief and Hope too, that this might be much better of an arrangement for me energy-wise, if I could only wrap my head around accepting it. The truth is, my whole life I’d lived in the mindset that my lungs were going to eventually heal and become “normal” when I reached adulthood aka college, yet I was slammed with the ugly reality when I switched over to an adult doctor, who told me I should be prepared for lung transplant evaluation instead.

My whole life, I’d been competing with people functioning at full capacity, when it was literally not possible. And even after the sad realization, I could not bear to face the reality that it was, and continued to live in doubt and silence.

After a few years of therapy now, which I started on and off 3 years ago, I think I’m becoming better at shifting my perspective to a more positive one, but it’s still a really long and bumpy road. I have to expect that most healthy people, especially ones at my age, will simply not get it, or even have the patience to try to get it, because they have their ableist privilege, and all I can do is control my own mentality.

The list could go on forever for all the rough moments in my life when other misguided people mistreated me and misunderstood me, believing I was taking advantage, or lying, “playing a victim”, or one thing or another, just because there was no visible evidence in their eyes. And it caused me to continue to doubt my own capabilities and limits as well for a long time. But now I realize that you do not let other people’s ignorance hurt your own knowledge and perseverance. You are not any less just because you were given less spoons.

I have to learn to forgive people and move on, because for a long time honestly, I’ve let myself get caught up in the unfairness of it all, and the rudeness of others causing me so much hurt and pain. No more.

As a person who is constantly overwhelmed by self-doubt and lack of confidence, I spend so much time as an INFJ also meditating how to make the world a better place- how can I impact the world and leave it a bit better than I found it? I don’t have ambitions as high as becoming the first female president, but there are subtle moments in our day-to-day that we can change and influence others, that become a wave of a bigger movement with one small decision.

It’s okay if you’re not perfect and live in a zero-waste house, for example, as long as you are at least conscious and working on improving lessening your wasteful contribution to the garbage landfills.

After researching a lot about environmental waste, particularly about non-biodegradeable products that are incredibly harmful in mass doses, I came across this website that discussed a movement in Berkeley, California encouraging restaurants and other cities to become straw-free. Of course, there are always people who might dismiss the idea with the thought that we are those annoying hipster tree-huggers. But I don’t consider myself one, in that I don’t censor and become super paranoid about using a plastic bottle for example. However, it is a simple solution that makes a lot of sense to me in persuading restaurants to become straw-free, cutting costs down for them as well as benefitting the environment. Straws are a superfluous product, one that we might enjoy using, but definitely do not need. It was surprising to me to find out that straws are one of the top 10 items contributing to total garbage littering our natural environment. So I thought, where can I make the biggest impact in as short and efficient of a time as possible? I looked up Applebee’s, a place that my fellowship and I frequent with up to 20 people if not over, almost weekly. I sent an email complimenting their staff, but also suggesting how cutting down on offering straws would make a huge difference.

Today, the manager called me and talked to me about it!! He said he never thought about it, but it was a pretty good idea and he would talk to upper management about it. The issue was that they used it as a difference between straws used for alcohol so that they could catch underage kids drinking. We talked for a couple minutes and he said his name was Jesse and I should flag him down next time I’m there so we could meet. I just thought it was so awesome of him to reach out and seem to actually CARE. YAY HUMANITY IS NOT LOST.

The second moment was when I wanted to join a bunch of dudes in watching basketball, and when I went to watch, one of the guys jokingly said, “get outta here, we’re tryna watch the game.” At first, my instinct was to laugh since they were laughing too, and I knew they were joking. One of the guys next to him was like yo that’s sexist. However, somehow I found the courage to speak up and ask him to apologize, in which he did, twice, the second time sincerely. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t worth writing a long post about, but I felt empowered and proud of myself for these small moments of hopefully contributing to a bigger wave of change in our thinking and our choices that we make.

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About Me

I like red pandas and the color orange. This is my stage jolting down thoughts about social and cultural issues, which include chronic illness, physical and mental health, the environment, feminism, race relations. Some in-between personal journaling.
Just wandering around trying to find my niche in the world